


Wild Alive

by NovelistAngel23



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Autistic Christophe, Coming of Age, Drinking, Falling In Love, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:00:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22306816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NovelistAngel23/pseuds/NovelistAngel23
Summary: The second time they meet, something is different. The second time they meet, Glenn notices him.
Relationships: Christophe/Glenn Fraldarius
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	Wild Alive

The first time Glenn meets Christophe Gaspard is at a party. Well, it’s technically the second time (as Chris eventually points out) since they went to high school together, but it’s the first time he notices him.

He’s pale as a ghost, cradling a little red solo cup full of Capri Sun fruit punch, huddled against a wall and watching people dance and mingle around him as if he’s about to pass out in the middle of it all. That’s why Glenn walks up to him, he tells himself. Not because he’s pretty and neat, and Glenn has a thing for pretty, neat things. His nails are perfectly cut, his eyes are perfectly round, his lips are perfectly bow-shaped. His clothes don’t belong anywhere near one of Miklan’s house parties.

“You don’t look nearly drunk enough to enjoy yourself,” Glenn says simply, voice just loud enough to be heard over the blaring music as he leans his shoulder against the wall beside Chris.

“Oh,” Chris breathes, eyes wide and deep, dark blue. “I… don’t drink.”

“You should start,” Glenn laughs and pushes his cup of vodka towards him. He raises one slender brow at him, a challenge.

The first time Chris impresses him is by taking the challenge for what it is. Tosses his head back and takes a shot--and immediately coughs up a lung. But there’s a sheepish smile on his face, and that’s what matters.

Glenn really doesn’t mean to end up in one of the Gautier’s gaudy guest rooms, taking Chris’s virginity to the beat of some awful pop song blaring downstairs, but when he wakes up next to Chris the next morning--fast asleep and curled around a pillow, a sleepy little smile on his perfect lips--he figures he could have done worse.

* * *

Christophe Gaspard is a journalism major, which Glenn learns two weeks later, when he meets him for the second (third) time. Standing up in the middle of his English literature class, introducing himself. “Um, I’m Christophe Gaspard… My major is journalism, a-and I’m in this class because I… w-well I just love literature.” He smiles sweetly, and Glenn feels something stir in his chest at the sight of it.

When Glenn is asked to introduce himself, he stands up too, and forces himself not to look at Chris. “Glenn Fraldarius, my major is marketing, I’m in this class because I needed an English course.” Then he sits and pretends he doesn’t see Chris’s shocked expression, as if Glenn is a ghost, back from the dead, or as if he’s going to spill to everyone that he likes it up the ass when he’s delirious on vodka.

He doesn’t of course, but Chris still chases him out of the classroom, books held to his chest because he was in too much of a hurry to put them away. “Wait!”

Glenn doesn’t turn to him, but he does slow down so he can catch up. “What’s up?”

Chris stares at him with those wide blue eyes, and Glenn wonders how much he can remember from that night, or if he cares to. Glenn holds his liquor significantly better than this deer-like boy. He remembers all of it.

“I just… wanted to… say hello,” Chris finally admits, unable to look at Glenn, a blush high on his cheeks. “I didn’t realize you went to this school.”

“I didn’t realize you did either,” Glenn says, but he doesn’t say much more. It’s not much of a conversation starter.

_Chris_ isn’t much of a conversation starter. He’s too shy. His eyes are too big and doe-like. He chews on his lip like he’s going to rip it off, and then he ducks his head and stutters, “W-we’re in the same class, so I was… wondering if you w-wanted to study together?”

Glenn doesn’t think he does, but he says yes anyway. They meet up in the cafeteria later, and Glenn invites him to his dorm room. There’s tension between them. There will always be tension, Glenn is almost positive. The memory of hands, skin, teeth. The memory of the bed against Chris’s bare back, of Glenn’s long, flowing hair, curtaining them in darkness as he leans over him.

But Glenn’s hair is tied in a tight bun, and they don’t actually fuck when they study--just get high. Somehow, Chris says yes when Glenn asks if he wants to, and they shotgun even though it makes Chris choke--it also makes him laugh. They lay on Glenn’s bed, staring at the popcorn ceiling, and Glenn feels so very far away.

The sun doesn’t rise at night, the stars are always in the sky, Glenn is majoring in marketing because he thinks that’s what his dad wants him to do, Chris is passionate about journalism and speaking out against injustice. They don’t study at all, but Chris manages to wax poetic about their reading due next class all night, and Glenn feels like he’s learned something anyway.

* * *

“You don’t believe in ghosts?” Chris asks, eyes wide with disbelief, and Glenn says Uno as he sets down a draw four and changes the color to green.

They're in Chris's room for once, and the place feels so homey and warm. It puts Glenn on edge for some reason. It feels so much like Christophe.

Chris, obviously, doesn't mind. He just frowns as he draws his cards, but he doesn’t seem too worried. He sets down a color change card and says, “Blue. Seriously, you don’t believe at all?”

“Ghosts aren’t real, sweetheart,” Glenn says. He likes the way Chris blushes when he does.

“I believe they are,” he insists, looking at his cards intently. “My little brother sees them.”

“Those are called hallucinations, and your brother should get his head checked,” Glenn sighs, and then goes digging in the card pile, only finding reds. “Who shuffled this?”

“You did,” Chris says, glaring at Glenn. “And don’t say that about my brother.”

Glenn smirks. Chris has a cute angry face. His lips get all twisted in this tiny pout, his cheeks puff out like a chipmunk. It takes everything in him not to tap his nose, not to kiss it or nuzzle it with his own.

But they haven’t talked about that yet, that tension between them, that memory. They’ve been tentative friends for months now, and they still haven’t addressed it at all. He wonders sometimes if Chris is afraid to.

Glenn’s not gay--at least not to anyone that matters--so he’s not going to bring it up first. But Chris doesn’t seem to care much about that kind of thing. He’s so passionate about being “progressive” Everything is a problem that he wants to solve. _That’s why journalism is so important!_ he says, eyes wide and sparkling. _I can help people. I can take down the system. I can do my part._

Glenn is a part of a system that has lasted generations and will last generations. He’s not the heir to his father’s company--that goes to his own little brother--but he’ll be the one selling their product someday, and one day he’ll marry a nice lady and she’ll pop out a couple more Fraldarius boys, and that’s just how it goes.

Chris is different. He doesn’t have to worry about all of that. He’s not an heir, and his father is chill with adoption, and he doesn’t mind that his son is gay, as long as he’s not dating the “wrong kind of man.”

Maybe Glenn is the wrong kind. Maybe that’s why when he catches Chris looking at him with something akin to yearning, Chris always looks away and says nothing.

“Sorry,” he says, but he’s not sure how much he means it. He knows Chris loves his brother, and he loves his own, but even he is willing to admit his family has issues. “Anyway, why do you believe in ghosts so much? What’s so great about dead people?”

“I didn’t say I like that they exist,” Chris hums, setting down a blue seven. Glenn immediately lays down a red seven and Chris sighs. “Did I ever tell you… my mother died when I was very young?”

He hasn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Glenn says.

“It’s all right. I was only ten or so… She died of an illness. I remember…” He gets a far away look in his eyes, holding the card he meant to put down but unable to move it. “I was sitting beside her bed, holding her hand the night she passed. I’d fallen asleep… and when I awoke, I was still holding it, but it was… so cold and stiff.” He stares a moment longer and then blinks. “That’s why I don’t… That’s why I don’t like hands.”

Glenn’s mouth feels dry. As long as he’s known Chris, he’s known he hates being touched without permission. Chris explained once that he’s on the autism spectrum, and Glenn assumed that was the reason.

This feels different.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, at a loss for words. He likes to think he’s good at comforting people. His little brother was such a crybaby growing up, he had to be good.

But Chris isn’t crying. He’s just laying down his second to last card. “Uno,” he says.

Glenn stares at him, wondering when they became close enough for Chris to open up to him this way. He sets down a draw four card again, and Chris puts his head in his hands.

* * *

Chris is just obsessed with dead things. That’s what Glenn tells himself, every time he hears yet another story about his past. His ex-best friend Cassandra, his ex-boyfriend Holst, his dead mom, their days in high school that Glenn barely remembers despite it happening only a year or so before.

“I really admired you back then,” Chris admits, walking at Glenn’s side, their hands swinging so close together that Glenn has half a mind to catch his. “I thought you were so… beautiful. And you had so many friends!”

Glenn smirks. He has maybe two friends now, Christophe included, and he’s never thought of himself as beautiful. “What do you think of me now?”

Chris blushes at the words, and Glenn almost chalks it up to the cool night air as he walks him to his dorm. “I still think you’re wonderful,” he says. “Just in a different way than before.”

Chris is so good at making Glenn curious. He’ll make a great journalist someday, if he can get over his struggles talking to people. “Yeah? How so.”

When he looks at Chris, there’s a challenge in his gaze. Chris meets it, studies it, like he’s dissecting Glenn’s intentions--oh but he doesn’t have to. He knows that. “I’m not very good at understanding people,” Chris whispers.

Why is he whispering? They stop walking. Chris is only an inch or so shorter than Glenn, but he seems so small and vulnerable sometimes, like now as he looks up at Glenn through his pale blonde lashes. His eyes are a much deeper blue than Glenn’s, so dark, dark blue--deep as an ocean. Glenn could drown.

“I like that… I don’t have to figure you out,” Chris explains, stepping closer to Glenn, just a step. “You’re a very blunt man, Glenn Fraldarius. You say what you mean or you say nothing. I love that about you.”

The word _love_ shouldn’t make Glenn’s heart thump this way, but it does.

Chris’s smile makes his heart pound even harder. He looks so irresistible this way, Glenn wonders if he means to, or maybe he’s just weak for him. Maybe Chris has just wormed his way beside his heart, whispering sweet nothings to it every time their eyes meet. “I hate people who don’t say what they mean,” he chokes.

“Holst was like that,” Chris says, his eyes flickering away.

Glenn tastes something bitter at the back of his throat. He wants to grab Chris by the shoulders and shake him. _Shut up about him!_ he wants to shout. _I’m right here!_

He is right there in front of Chris. But he doesn’t do a thing.

“He was so terrified of being himself, so he built all of these walls.” Chris laughs, but there’s no humor to it, only sorrow. “I tried so hard to climb them, but he only ever built them higher.”

He turns as if to walk away, and Glenn doesn’t know why he moves to grab him, only that he stops part way there. Chris looks up at him, eyes wide with alarm. “Glenn?”

Glenn shakes his head, curling his hand back to himself. “I’m sorry, I… I just…” Glenn stares at him, taking him in.

Christophe Gaspard is beautiful. Curly blonde hair, parted at the center to show off the pale freckles all along his refined nose. His deep blue eyes, his full lashes, his cupid’s bow lips, his high cheekbones. He’s so beautiful. Glenn is overwhelmed suddenly. The flush of red along the apples of his cheeks and dusting across his nose. Glenn wants to kiss him. Over and over, forever. Fuck what his father thinks. His whole damn company can collapse in the middle of Glenn’s fist.

When Glenn gets overwhelmed, he gets angry, and he gets mean, and he says things he doesn’t mean to, and he knows, he knows he’s going to do that to Chris. Someday, he’ll say something too mean, and Chris’s pretty eyes will fill up with tears. Maybe he has built himself into a fortress. He’s blunt. He doesn’t lie. But that doesn’t mean he’s kind. That doesn’t mean his truths are gentle.

“I’m not… I’m not worth admiring,” he whispers.

Chris smiles, tilts his head at him. “I don’t admire you anymore, Glenn,” he laughs.

Glenn stares and then lets out his own laugh of disbelief. “What?”

Chris steps towards him again, and then--Glenn can see the hesitation--he lays his hand against Glenn’s chest, right over his beating heart. “I’ve grown out of that, I think. I know… you’re strong. Brave. Maybe you aren’t the kindest man I’ve ever met…” He looks up at Glenn at that, his eyes squinted, teasing. “But you are honest. I don’t admire it. I appreciate it. You are a very good you, Glenn. You’re the only Glenn Hephaeston Fraldarius anyone will ever be. And I am the only Christophe Charon Gaspard anyone will ever be. And that’s all we have to be.”

He nods, decidedly, and then turns to walk away again. Glenn doesn’t reach for him this time. He watches him go. He’s never had to be himself before. It’s kind of scary.

But Christophe doesn’t like him for his future or his duty or his responsibilities.

The wind blows cold, and when he sees Chris shudder, he takes off his jacket and hurries to offer it to him. It’s going to snow soon. Chris beside him is warm.

* * *

Glenn has a terrible habit of drinking when he’s stressed, and finals are coming up.

He somehow forgets every time what it feels like to take a test. The moment it’s over, he celebrates until he’s unconscious, and forgets until the next one rolls around how hard his hands shake and his stomach hurts. He doses up with a couple shots of tequila and studies in a daze.

He is a terrible influence on Christophe.

“Tequila doesn’t sound like a good study tool,” he hums, swirling his shot glass and leveling Glenn with an unimpressed stare over the rim.

Glenn just smiles and taps their cups together, says, “Cheers!” and throws his head back.

The burn is so satisfying going down, makes him grin and grit his teeth and let out a loud whoop of approval. When he looks at Chris again, blinking back tears, he finds he still hasn’t taken the shot. “Aw, come on, baby face, don’t be a pussy!”

He moves onto his knees, crawls towards Chris, and touches the bottom of the glass. “This okay?” he asks, his other hand inching towards the back of Chris’s head.

Chris stares at him, and then, silently, nods, his eyes wide and blue. Glenn takes the back of his head in hand, trying not to think about how soft and warm his hair is, and tilts him back, pushing the cup to his lips. Chris lets him, shuts his eyes tight and opens his lips for the shot. He does choke, of course, and Glenn lets him go, but he splutters and laughs, and says, “You’re awful!”

Glenn smiles because he knows that when Chris says _You’re awful!_ it is a term of endearment. Glenn’s honored to be Chris’s favorite brand of awful.

They make a game out of it. Do a page in the study guide together, and then take a shot. It’s only two in, and Chris is already drunk, with three pages left to go.

Chris is such a giggly drunk, his face red, his words slurred. He’s so touchy--touchier than he ever is--crawling as close to Glenn as he can without being in his lap. “Glenny?” he giggles, cheek on his shoulder. “Why are you in this dumb English class anyway?”

A question he’s never had the audacity to ask when he isn’t stumbling drunk. Glenn looks down at him, at his pretty puppy dog eyes, begging for his honesty. “Because I needed the English credit.”

Chris smiles wide, sly, a look nearly out of place on his pretty babydoll face. “That’s not true,” he whispers. He raises his brows. “I think you like it too.”

Glenn tosses aside the study guide and turns to look at Chris, intent. “What do I like, Chrissy?”

A nickname that always makes Chris blush. It makes him giggle now, makes him duck his head and bite his pretty lips. “You like books,” he says. He looks at Glenn again and then raises onto his knees and crawls up to him, until their faces are inches apart. “Admit it! You’re a big nerd, just like me. You _love_ reading.”

Glenn laughs. “Is that a bad thing?” he asks, his hands twitching at his side. He aches to take Chris’s hips in his hands, to pull him into his lap, to kiss him until neither of them can breathe.

The tension is still there. It has never gone away or faded.

“Why don’t you read for fun?” Chris whines, his breath smelling powerfully of alcohol, and Glenn desperately wants another shot. “Why don’t you do anything for fun?”

“I do plenty of things for fun.”

“No,” Chris says, shaking his head. “Everything has to be important to you.” He waves his hand about, as if gesturing to his room. It’s all very neat. Everything put away and clean. Glenn doesn’t keep books unless they’re for class. Glenn’s TV is almost never on. “You’ve always gotta do what you're supposed to do. You're a fake bad boy.”

“Bold words coming from a daddy’s boy,” Glenn challenges, but his throat feels tight.

“I don’t do everything my father asks,” Chris says right back. Taking Glenn’s challenge. “I love him, and he loves me enough not to make me do whatever he wants.”

“My father doesn’t make me--”

“Then why are you?”

Glenn stares at Chris. So bold when alcohol is there to loosen his tongue. His face is flushed to his ears, but he’s making his angry face, and it doesn’t look cute anymore. It feels like a punch in his gut. “I have rules to follow,” he says. The words feel hollow. Who made those rules anyway? Did his father ever actually force him to go into this stupid marketing shit? Did his father ever actually tell him he can’t be gay, did his father ever actually tell him he has to do everything he’s asked?

When did he stop saying no?

When did he stop saying yes?

“Break them,” Chris insists, his eyes wide and sparkling. “Break those stupid rules. Do what you want!”

“What do I want, Chrissy?” Glenn breathes, meeting his gaze with his own steady one.

“I don’t know,” Chris says back. “You never tell me. You never tell anyone.”

Glenn looks at Christophe for so long, so quiet, the only sound the ceiling fan above them, the cars driving past far below his dorm window. They left the lights on. Glenn wishes he could turn them off and see how Chris looks in the moonlight.

“I want you,” he says.

Chris stares at him. “Then take me.”

Chris’s lips taste better this way, now that he knows him. He gasps into Glenn’s mouth at the forcefulness of his kiss, but he kisses back, clumsy, needy. His hands on Glenn’s shoulders, and then around his neck as Glenn grabs him and pulls him into his lap.

“Can I touch your hair?” he asks.

Glenn yanks his hair tie out and lets all of his long hair tumble down his back, over his shoulders, and groans when Chris ever so gently runs his fingers through it.

He tries, he really does, but he can’t be gentle for long. All of the tension, the desire, the _yearning_ has led to this. Study guide forgotten beside them, Glenn pulls Chris’s clothes off, sucks marks into unblemished skin, as if to remind the both of them that this happened, that Chris belongs to Glenn as much as Glenn belongs to him. Chris rides him right there on the floor until he can’t anymore, until he cries, until Glenn shows him some mercy and takes over.

They wake up tangled in each other. Glenn’s long hair splayed out across the carpet, Chris's cheek against his chest. “Why do we only ever sleep together when we’re drunk?” Glenn wonders out loud.

Chris smiles. “We don’t have to.” He looks up at Glenn, pets his cheek. His eyes are mesmerizing. “I want you, too.”

* * *

Felix thinks Chris is a pushover. Ashe thinks Glenn is a bad influence. But they both smile the first time they meet their brother’s new boyfriend. Chris’s dad Lonato smiles too, though he pulls Chris aside to ask, _Are you sure?_

Chris smiles at Glenn as he answers, _Yes._

The real moment of truth to Glenn is introducing his boyfriend to his own father. Rodrigue answers the door smiling, and the smile doesn’t fall when he sees Glenn standing there, with Chris beside them--it doesn’t fall even when he notices that they’re holding hands.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Christophe whispers that night, curled up against Glenn’s side as they lay in his childhood bed.

“No,” Glenn admits. “It wasn’t.”

“Are you okay?”

Glenn stares at the ceiling. His old room is full of books. Video games, movies. A flat screen TV. He wonders when he left so much of himself in this tiny bedroom. He wonders why his father never threw any of it away, but he knows now. That all of those rules and duties and responsibilities, maybe he did all of that to himself.

Chris kisses his cheek, and he closes his eyes. “Are you okay?” he repeats, a little slower this time.

“Yes,” he says, thinking about which games he’s going to take back when he leaves, which books he and Chris might read together. He thinks about how he’s going to tell his dad that he’s not doing marketing anymore, but he’s pretty sure his dad won’t mind.

For the first time, Glenn’s future is scary because he _doesn’t_ know what it’ll be.

Just that Chris will be there at his side. Maybe that’s enough.

“God, yeah,” he laughs. “I’m better than ever.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pour one out for Dani, this one's for you XD I got that first line stuck in my head, and decided I simply had to do something. I hope I did Glenny justice! I've never written him before, so it was a bit of a challenge! I love Christophe being a bandaid for various broken hearts.
> 
> Also I guess this is a good time to say every Chris I write is on the spectrum? It doesn't come up in vague medieval fantasy world, but! Yeah! Glad I got a chance to fit that into a fic finally <3
> 
> As always, if you enjoyed, please leave a kudos and/or a comment =D If you have any questions or just wanna see what I'm up to, hit me up on twitter @novelistangel23 . Thank you for reading!


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